Even healthy brains decline with age. Here's what you can do

 

July 16, 20256:00 AM ET

 Jon Hamilton

Even healthy brains slow down as they age. But there are ways to keep that thinker in tip-top shape.

 After about age 40, our brains begin to lose a step or two.

Each year, our reaction time slows by a few thousandths of a second. We're also less able to recall items on a shopping list.

Those changes can be signs of a disease, like Alzheimer's. But usually, they're not.

"Both of those things, memory and processing speed, change with age in a normal group of people," says Matt Huentelman, a professor at TGen, the Translational Genomics Research Institute, in Phoenix.

As the U.S. ages, dementia is on the rise. Here are ways to reduce your risk

Huentelman should know. He helps run MindCrowd, a free online cognitive test that has been taken by more than 700,000 adults.

 

About a thousand of those people had test scores indicating that their brain was "exceptional," meaning they performed like a person 30 years younger on tests of memory and processing speed.

Genetics played a role, of course. But Huentelman and a team of researchers have been focusing on other differences.

 Treatments

 A protein called Reelin keeps popping up in brains that resist aging and Alzheimer's

"We want to study these exceptional performers because we think they can tell us what the rest of us should be doing," he says.

Early results suggest that sleep and maintaining cardiovascular health are a good start. Other measures include avoiding smoking, limiting alcohol and getting plenty of exercise.

Huentelman was one of several dozen researchers who met in Miami this summer to discuss healthy brain aging. The event was hosted by the McKnight Brain Research Foundation, which funds studies on age-related cognitive decline and memory loss.

 To preserve cognitive function in later life, "we're going to have to understand [brain] aging at a mechanistic level," says Alice Luo Clayton, a neuroscientist who is the group's chief executive officer.

The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes

Another speaker was Christian Agudelo, a sleep neurologist at the University of Miami's Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute.

"I think the value of sleep and sleep deprivation became true to me when I had kids," Agudelo says.

Those kids are 4 and 6 now, so Agudelo is getting more sleep. But his own experience is consistent with his research on the relationship between sleep and cognitive decline.

When kindness becomes a habit, it improves our health

 "The better you sleep, the better your brain health is going to be both structurally and functionally," Agudelo says.

Keep in mind: Better sleep isn't just about getting more sleep.

The key is getting high-quality sleep, which allows the brain to cycle through all the sleep stages, Agudelo says.

Researchers can measure how well a person is sleeping by monitoring their brain wave patterns. But people usually know when they've had a good night's rest, Agudelo says.

"You go to sleep, you wake up and you feel like that experience was worthwhile," he says. "You feel refreshed."

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Ensuring high-quality sleep is tricky. But people can improve the odds with certain behaviors, Agudelo says

"Waking up at the same time every single day and aligning our sleep rhythms with the rhythm of the sun" can lead to better sleep, he says. So can "being active, both socially and physically."

Those behaviors increase "sleep pressure," the body's natural desire to sleep the longer we are awake, Agudelo says. When that pressure is high, he says, "we can fall asleep more easily and deeply."

Brain aging is also influenced by vascular risk factors, like blood pressure, cholesterol levels and diabetes, says Charles DeCarli, a neurologist who co-directs the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of California, Davis.

 People know that these risk factors usually contribute to medical conditions like heart attack or stroke, DeCarli says. But research on thousands of people 65 and older has found that these risk factors can also impact the brain directly — even if they don't cause a heart attack or other cardiovascular problems.

 "The size of the brain, the shape of the brain, the tissue integrity of the brain looks older in people who have these risk factors than in people who do not have them," he says.

So DeCarli and a team of researchers are studying whether it's possible to protect the brain by aggressively treating conditions that affect the circulatory system.

"The question is, if you have these diseases and they are well controlled, will you have a younger-looking brain?" he says. "And the answer seems to be yes."

 

‘A vastly superior way to live’: why more seniors should choose cohousing

https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/jul/11/seniors-retirement-cohousing-community

Unlike nursing homes or living alone (and lonely), cohousing emphasizes community and mutual support Adrienne Matei Fri 11 Jul 2025 12.00 EDT Share Earlier this year, Angela Maddamma, 72, loaded all her belongings into her car. She drove from a house in suburban Richmond, Virginia, where she had lived for 20 years, to her new life about five hours west, in a senior cohousing project called ElderSpirit. Cohousing communities are “thoughtfully designed neighborhoods with private homes” arranged around common areas, where people may gather and build relationships with their neighbors, according to the Cohousing Company design firm. Cohousing is typically multigenerational – of the roughly 170 total cohousing units in the US, most are home to people of all ages, from young families to seniors. But about 12 are senior-specific. After retiring last fall, Maddamma came across the concept of senior cohousing online. She liked the sound of ElderSpirit, a collective of 29 individual units and a common house surrounded by garden paths, which was near enough to visit. What she saw was not – as her friends and family asked afterward – some kind of cult or commune. “It’s your average 55 and older community, where you’re living independently” in a rented or purchased unit, Maddamma says. But the members share a “foundation of what’s important to us in our senior years, and here, it’s mutual support” plus other values like environmental care and a broad interest in spirituality and the “mysteries of ageing”. “I realized that I spent a good part of my adult life searching for community,” Maddamma says. When Maddamma lived in the suburbs, she waved at neighbors as she came and went to work. But she didn’t meet many people. “I had to search. I joined various clubs; I started a book club,” she says. That helped, but it didn’t create the proximate, tight-knit community she was really looking for – where people might spontaneously pop by to say hello, or you could bump into a friend while going about your day. By contrast, the evening she arrived at ElderSpirit, the sun was setting, her porch light was on and neighbors were waiting to welcome her with dinner. If she was tired, she should turn off the porch light, they told her; otherwise, people would see it and keep stopping by to greet her all evening. “That’s the kind of community it is,” says Maddamma. Now when I ask Maddamma if her social needs are being met, she replies: “Heck yes.” The day we spoke, she walked the Virginia Creeper Trail with a friend, met with other volunteers from the ElderSpirit membership committee and finished a book. She still has plenty of time to “veg out” undisturbed at home, which is important to her, she says. For the growing number of people seeking out or forming dedicated senior cohousing communities, such configurations offer a joyful and fulfilling experience of ageing. It’s “a vastly superior way to live”, says Maddamma, compared with alternatives such as moving into a retirement home or ageing in place – which means staying in your own home rather than moving to a facility or nursing home. The latter can end up being isolating, especially for seniors who live alone and lack nearby support. Two older men play tennis. View image in fullscreen ‘In the US, most seniors, by a huge margin, have no idea what senior cohousing is,’ says author and architect Charles Durrett. Photograph: Leland Bobbe/Getty Images Margaret Critchlow, 78, began thinking about starting a cohousing project while helping put her own mother in care around 2010. She realized she couldn’t afford an institutional retirement home herself, and, moreover, didn’t want to be in one. One major issue was the unreliable standards of care. Furthermore, institutions “take away the ability to decide what your day is going to look like”, offering scheduled activities (“bingo at 2 o’clock”) and mealtimes that reduce individual agency, Critchlow says. An anthropologist, Critchlow has taught courses about cohousing at York University in Toronto, and considers a village-like arrangement the ideal way to “do everything from growing up to raising children to growing old”. So Critchlow set out to find land in the oceanfront town of Sooke, British Columbia, Canada, where she had been taking a sabbatical, and embarked on a first-hand education in cohousing development. She began collecting a group of friends and like-minded individuals who envisioned the same ideals. These covered logistics (separate dwellings, strata titling, decisions by consensus) and ideology (mutual support, honoring privacy while facilitating friendly socialization). Harbourside Cohousing opened in 2016, a community of 51 people living on a 3-acre plot of land in a 12-unit configuration, with communal spaces including a wharf with a cute gazebo. Critchlow helped write a research guide to assist others with cohousing dreams. While developing her approach to cohousing, she read the 2005 Senior Cohousing Handbook, by the Nevada-based author and architect Charles Durrett. Durrett, 70, is a pioneer of American cohousing, and has helped develop over 55 of the US’s cohousing projects. He first became interested in the topic when he walked past a cohousing community on his way to school at the University of Copenhagen in 1980. Having grown up in a California town of 325 people, he feels that living in and serving community is “ennobling at a very basic level”. Denmark is an international leader in the cohousing movement. The practice began catching on in the country in the 60s. It gained momentum thanks to early success stories and news articles such as Bodil Graae’s Children Should Have One Hundred Parents (1967) and Jan Gudmand-Høyer’s The Missing Link Between Utopia and the Dated One-Family House (1968), which presented visions for supportive living environments. The Danish government and financial institutions supported the concept with favorable zoning laws and financing options, and cohousing developed into a fairly well-established living arrangement. Two older people sit in deck chairs and smile. View image in fullscreen Increasing opportunities for cohousing would mean more people could live, and die, among people who care about them. Photograph: Leland Bobbe/Getty Images According to a 2024 Danish survey, 80,000 of the country’s seniors are planning to move into cohousing within the next five years, making it the majority choice over alternative housing options such as a house, condo or assisted care. To Durrett, who lives in a Nevada-based cohousing community he helped create, the challenges of popularizing cohousing include the fact that over the last century Americans have grown steadily more socially isolated, developing a culture of independence that can veer cynical. “What if I don’t get along with people?” is a common worry, Durrett says. “Well, you’re not gonna get along with everybody, but if we do this right, you’re gonna have five or six best friends living next door.”

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Loss and Grief: Cry.  Cry as much as you want.  Even if you have to use an IV drip to stay hydrated.

Don't isolate: When we isolate we ruminate about all of the things that went wrong and we completely ignore all the wonderful and amazing things we did, shared and experienced.

When we are treated poorly: Why does that person think that they can get away with talking that way to us!  Don't allow this.  Withdraw.  Engage in caring dialogue.  Whatever. But don't allow yourself to be treated that way.

Interpersonal Boundaries: Read this.

Go dancing: It helps get us out of our head.  

You're an Artist: Do what you like and need to do.  Writers need to write.  Artists need to do art.  You have talent, even if nobody else knows it.

Do something physical.  Our body is connected to our moods.  Go for a walk.  Ride a bike.  Get the blood flowing.  

Call acquaintances and friends: Suggest having coffee.  A short get together.  Catch up on what is happening with each other.  (Do this a few times every week).

Go to bed just because it is comfortable: Indulge yourself.  You don't need an excuse.  `

`Work' is not the same as a `Job':  Some of us like to get our hands dirty.  Gardening.  Volunteering.  Woodworking.  

Take credit: If you have a pet think about how you loved that pet and what joy and pleasure you brought to that pet.  Same goes for your partner.

See a Therapist: Be picky about it.  Someone you click with.  Or, find a crowded closet, close the door and talk.  Say anything you want.  Answer yourself, even.  

,

 

Why Don’t We Hang Out Anymore?

Adults need to relax and do nothing together, just like kids do.

Credit...Nicolás Ortega

By Jancee Dunn

Feb. 9, 2024

For the past few weeks, I’ve been running an experiment: inviting friends to simply hang out and do nothing, or close to nothing. I’ve asked them to drop by for a cup of tea. I’ve volunteered to join them as they walk their dogs. When I found out that my local grocery store opened at 7 a.m., I asked a fellow early riser if she wanted to get her shopping done early with me.

Some were 

slightly suspicious at first, but everyone was game. (“Well, I do need coffee filters,” said my friend, who joined me at the delightfully empty supermarket.)

It’s well-documented that friendships improve our physical and mental health and are vital for well-being. But I was inspired to make it even easier to see friends after reading “Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time” by Sheila Liming, which argues that unstructured time with others can improve our relationships.

When you’re a kid with limited funds and modes of transport, hanging out with friends feels natural. But adults are often used to doing scheduled activities with one another, said Jessica Ayers, an assistant professor of psychological science at Boise State University, who researches adult friendships.

“Often, we don’t think something is beneficial unless it’s productive,” she said. We don’t always realize “that sitting around and resting with someone is still a productive state, and worthy of our time,” she said.

Liming, an associate professor of writing at Champlain College, said there wasn’t much research on hanging out and more was needed. But there’s evidence to suggest that face-to-face contact can strengthen emotional closeness. Plus, hanging out has an appealingly low barrier of entry, and it’s inexpensive: You don’t need reservations or tickets or special skills.

Hanging out also invites deeper conversation and builds intimacy, Liming said. (Dr. Ayers points to the trending desire on social media for a “couch friend” — a buddy that will sit with you on the couch and happily do nothing.)

But Liming acknowledges that it can feel daunting to spend time together with no formal agenda. Here’s how to get started.

Decide what sort of hanging out you want to do.

There are different forms of hanging out, Dr. Ayers said. If you like a more face-to-face, conversational hangout, you can spend time in each other’s homes or sit on a park bench together.

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If you would feel more comfortable doing something more active, grab a friend and run errands. “I’ve gone with my best friend to get gas,” Dr. Ayers said.

Or you might look for places in your community where people gather, Liming said. In her Vermont town, she said, people congregate at a public ice skating rink in the winter.

“I don’t ice skate, but I find that a lot of people end up hanging out by the ice rink,” she said, “so I did that yesterday and I saw a bunch of people who live near me and ended up chatting.”

Keep it brief.

If the idea of hanging out in your messy living room or at the carwash makes you feel a little vulnerable, Liming said, start small. Tell a friend you’re going to drop by for 20 minutes or a half-hour. “One thing that freaks people out about hanging out is that it feels open-ended and they don’t know how much time it’s going to take,” she said.

Acknowledge that it might be awkward at first.

It’s natural to feel a little discomfort in the beginning, Liming said. But one of the advantages of hanging out is that “it allows us to see a more three-dimensional side of the people we see and interact with,” she explained. If you’re in their home, you might get glimpses of their domestic lives, histories or hobbies, she said. “If we can be in a room doing nothing with someone else, that is a pretty sincere form of intimacy,” she said.

Consider making it a ritual.

Once you’ve hung out a few times, consider making it a regular habit that grows easier over time, Liming said. She has a friend whose house is near the campus where she teaches. Once a week or so, she will swing by his house and hang out with him in his kitchen while he’s folding laundry or prepping for dinner. “I have a cup of tea and then I head out,” she said.

Regular meet-ups with friends can alleviate the pressure of having to orchestrate a perfect hangout, she said: “If it doesn’t work out one week, you can try again the next week.”

And if you still feel hesitant about asking friends for some agenda-free hang time, “remind yourself that this person is not hanging out with you because they don’t have anything else to do,” Dr. Ayers said. “No. This person wants to be around you.”

How Exercise May Help Us Flourish

Physical activity can promote a sense of purpose in life, creating a virtuous cycle that keeps you moving.

Our exercise habits may influence our sense of purpose in life and our sense of purpose may affect how much we exercise, according to an interesting new study of the reciprocal effects of feeling your life has meaning and being often in motion. 

The study, which involved more than 18,000 middle-aged and older men and women, found that those with the most stalwart sense of purpose at the start were the most likely to become active over time, and vice versa.The findings underscore how braided the relationship between physical activity and psychological well-being can be, and how the effects often run both ways.Science already offers plenty of evidence that being active bolsters our mental, as well as physical, health. Study after study shows that men and women who exercise are less likely than the sedentary to develop depression or anxiety. 

Additional research indicates that the reverse can be true, and people who feel depressed or anxious tend not to work out.But most of these studies examined connections between exercise and negative moods.  Fewer have delved into positive emotions and their links with physical activity, and fewer still have looked at the role of a strong sense of purpose and how it might influence whether we move, and the other way around.  This omission puzzled Ayse Yemiscigil, a postdoctoral research fellow with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, who studies well-being.  “A sense of purpose is the feeling that you get from having goals and plans that give direction and meaning to life,” she says.  “It is about being engaged with life in productive ways.” This definition of purpose struck her as overlapping in resonant ways with many people’s motivations for exercise, she says. 

“Active people often talk about how exercise gives structure and meaning to their lives,” she says. “It provides goals and achievements.”In that case, she thought, physical activity plausibly could contribute to a sense of purpose and, likewise, a sense of purpose might influence how likely we are to exercise. But there was scant evidence to support those ideas. 

So, for the new study, which was published in April in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, she and her colleague Ivo Vlaev, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Warwick in England, set out to find links, if any, between moving and meaning. They began by turning to the large and ongoing Health and Retirement Study, which gathers longitudinal data about the lives, attitudes and activities of thousands of American adults aged 50 or older.  It asks them at the start about their physical health, background, daily activities and mental health, including if they agree with statements like, “I have a sense of direction and purpose in life,” or “My daily activities often seem trivial and unimportant.” The study’s researchers then checked back after a few years to repeat the queries.

Then, Dr. Yemiscigil and Dr. Vlaev drew records for 14,159 of the participants.  To enlarge and enrich their sample, they also gathered comparable data for another 4,041 men and women enrolled in a different study that asked similar questions about people’s physical activities and sense of purpose. Finally, they collated and compared the results, determining, first, how much and how vigorously people moved, and also how strong their sense of purpose seemed to be.  The researchers then assessed how those disparate aspects of people’s lives seemed to be related to one another over the years, and they found clear intersections.  People who started off with active lives generally showed an increasing sense of purpose over the years, and those whose sense of purpose was sturdier in the beginning were the most physically active years later.  The associations were hardly outsize. 

Having a firm sense of purpose at one point in people’s lives was linked, later, with the equivalent of taking an extra weekly walk or two.  But the associations were consistent and remained statistically significant, even when the researchers controlled for people’s weight, income, education, overall mental health and other factors. “It was especially interesting to see these effects in older people,” Dr. Yemiscigil says, “since many older people report a decreasing sense of purpose in their lives, and they also typically have low rates of engagement in physical activity.”

This study was based, though, on people’s subjective estimates of their exercise and purposefulness, which could be unreliable. The findings are also associational, meaning they show links between having a sense of purpose at one point in your life and being active later, or vice versa, so do not prove one causes the other.

But Dr. Yemiscigil believes the associations are sturdy and rational. “People often report more self-efficacy” after they take up exercise, she says, which might prompt them to feel capable of setting new goals and developing a new or augmented purpose in life. And from the other side, “when you have goals and a sense of purpose, you probably want to be healthy and live long enough to fulfill them.” 

So, cue exercise, she says.

How to Participate in Challenging Athletic Events During the Pandemic

LIKE MOST OF US I AM TRYING TO FIND WAYS AND METHODS TO STILL PARTICIPATE IN ULTRA EVENTS DURING THE C19 PANDEMIC. I'M SHARING SOME OF A RECENT EMAIL I SENT TO A GOOD FRIEND WHO HAD EARLIER OFFERED TO BE A CREW MEMBER FOR ME ON THE NATCHEZ TRACE 444 IN EARLY OCTOBER OF THIS YEAR.

"At the outset (March and April) of the pandemic I was spending a good deal of time adapting and making adjustments to both my personal and professional life.  But in the past few weeks things have straightened out and a new normal has taken hold.  My wife has found ways to socialize without risk (which helps me not feel like I'm `abandoning' her while I work and train), my practice is completely virtual (i.e., telephone and video only, no in person work), and I've returned to steady and progressive training on the bike.  

As I've learned methods to minimize exposure to the virus I've reconsidered how and if I would participate in biking events.  Of course, most of these events have either been canceled or rescheduled to later in the year.  But there has been no notification as to whether the Natchez Trace 444 schedule has changed.  And I'm giving serious consideration to participating, still.  But my participation will have several caveats. 

If you're still up for crewing, and if I continue to plan on participating in it, here are a few considerations:

• You, me, and another crew member would have to be tested for the Covid-19 virus immediately before the event.  At my expense.  
• As well, we'd all have to have a robust antibody test. Again, at my expense.  
• I think it responsible and prudent for each of us to get the Covid-19 and antibody tests after the event.  At my expense.
• During the event we'd want to minimize proximate contact with other participants, their crew, vendors, gas station and store personnel.  
• Wearing and using masks, hand sanitizers and handi-wipes would be essential.

Would you be willing to comply with these actions?"